Sweet Revenge
by mispel
Summary: Wat does something foolish. Will does something drastic. Adhemar gets drunk. WillAdhemar slash.
1. Chapter 1

Sweet Revenge Part 1

  
  


Adhemar walked between the tents as evening approached. Many new faces peered at him idly, insolently, others stumbled to bed drunk. Adhemar had given up jousting in favor of more serious pursuits. Now he was reliving the old days, only a few years old, but seemingly far away. He spied William's tent and found it empty. He concluded that they must be meeting elsewhere.

She had been obvious, coming to the tournaments, staying to mingle with the throng. He chose not to be infuriated. It mattered very little to him. He only didn't want his inheritance to go to the son of a thatcher's son instead of his own.

Adhemar walked on to the edge of the camp. He then walked almost all around before he saw her on the bank of the river. It must have been a lovely spot in the daylight. A copse of trees was meant to hide them from sight. But even under a half moon her finery was visible while her lover almost blended into the dark and the dirt. Adhemar watched them - their heads close. Then they rolled over and were only a rise along the shore. Jocelyn's laugh reached him and then his. But Thatcher's laugh sounded wrong. As things became more heated between them, Adhemar left.

Adhemar made his way through the camp slowly, wondering how many knew and dared to laugh behind his back. Then he nearly ran into him.

"Thatcher!?" Adhemar said in surprise.

"That's Sir... Ah bugger it, it's late. What are you doing here?"

The boy seemed perfectly casual, unhurried, not the least bit winded.

"You..." Adhemar stared at him.

"What?"

"You look the same," Adhemar said offhandedly not even thinking what he was saying, thinking about the man that was bedding his wife, who wasn't William.

"You're looking right dashing yourself," William said as if going along with Adhemar's strange behavior.

"The same. Young," Adhemar mumbled as he stared at him absently.

William looked unchanged. Not that it was that long ago. It just seemed to be since he had given up the tournaments. Since he had married Jocelyn, and she had tired him out.

"Why, thank you," William said as if a compliment was intended.

Adhemar wasn't paying attention. He was looking back in the direction he had come from.

"You drunk?" William asked him.

"I wish I were. I wish I could over-imbibe and fall into a drunken stupor like your kind," Adhemar told him, envying all those who had to be dragged to their beds by their fellows, unable to stand, unable to think, blissfully ignorant.

"My kind? You mean us young, handsome fellows," William said smiling brightly at Adhemar's misery.

"No, I mean..." Something caught Adhemar's eye - a young man coming toward them, looking in some ways as if he had just woken up. His clothes were disheveled and also his hair. But he was ruddy, flushed, his face obviously red even in the dark, and not at all sleepy. Most damning of all, he wore a stupid grin. On seeing Adhemar, the man stopped. He then looked around him, seeming as if he was going to go in all directions at once. The grin disappeared. The not in the least attractive face twisted as the happiness was gone from it.

Adhemar felt lightheaded. A common... Adhemar was about to ask who that was when William shout, "Hey, Wat!"

In response, Wat made incomprehensible sounds, his voice getting higher with each nonsensical thing he said. Even Thatcher, with his thick, peasant skull, knew something was amiss. He looked from Wat to Adhemar.

"You best go to bed, Wat. You look tired."

"Tired. Tired!" Wat yelled in his strangely high voice and disappeared zigzagging through the tents as if trying to throw off pursuit.

Adhemar looked at Thatcher with suspicion.

"Are you two sharing her then?" he hissed. The shock on the boy's face made Adhemar dismiss the idea.

"What? Where do you get these notions? What is wrong with you?" William blustered.

"I am being cuckolded, you simpleton. And not even by you. By your servant!"

"He is my..."

"Who cares!"

"You are talking nonsense."

He knew. Adhemar was sure of it. He and who knows how many more.

William chattered, but Adhemar didn't look at him or listen. But Adhemar did hear him say, "You wanted drink, didn't you? I can grant your wish," just before Thatcher took his arm very gently and pulled him into his tent.

Adhemar wondered what the boy was up to as he poured him drink after drink. Adhemar considered that the affair might have had an effect on him as well, and he needed the drink as much as Adhemar did. He also considered that Thatcher was planning to drown him in ale. Convince him that whatever he saw he didn't see, and whatever he thought was just drunken foolishness best forgotten.

As ale overtook his senses, Adhemar went from silent, sullen drunkenness to talking about Jocelyn - the troubles she had given him, the petty rebellions, and the constant war between them that wouldn't let him rest between real battles in the field and at court. He didn't expect William to have anything of value to say. And he was right.

"What'd you expect, marrying a woman who didn't love you. Men whose wives love them dearly regret ever getting themselves tied up that way," William was telling him.

"You speak from your complete lack of inexperience," Adhemar slurred looking confused for a moment but not able to figure out what he had said wrong.

"She well nearly killed me, you know. Joust after joust, with me taking it straight to the heart and her heartlessly watching."

"That was nice," Adhemar said with a sloppy smile at the memory and the nearly poetic words.

"Was not. And if she would do that to a man she loved, what would she do to you, do you think? You're lucky to still have body and soul together. 'xcept you don't got a soul you minion of the unholy Devil," William said as he flopped back on the bed.

Adhemar laughed maybe at the boy's 'wisdom' or at being called merely the Devil's minion and not the Devil himself as was the least he was due from this peasant. Or maybe just at the thought of Thatcher being pummeled.

There was more unbefitting laughter and talk between them before William was either asleep or unconscious on the bed. Adhemar looked at his placid face, open mouthed, drooling, handsome in the most common way before he lost consciousness next to him.

  
  


To be continued


	2. Chapter 2

Sweet Revenge Part 2

  
  


Jocelyn found Adhemar lying on William's bed. There was not a excess of clothing or empty space between the two of them. There was some overlapping of underdressed body parts. Jocelyn did them the great favor of waking them with a deafening screech. They both groaned at the noise, which sounded like a hundred lances going through their heads. On seeing her, they tried to get up. Their legs - being entangled - made them fall off the bed together in an even more compromising way.

"And to think I came over because I was worried about you!" Jocelyn yelled at William hardly sparing a glare for her husband.

"Jocelyn," William exclaimed breathlessly as if he only then recognized her.

"I thought he might have killed you!" she screamed.

William put his hands over his ears. Adhemar withstood the noise more manfully as he tried to extricate himself from William.

"And why should I do that, my dear wife? Poor William here has done nothing wrong," Adhemar said composing himself rather quickly for a man filled with that much ale and only recently entwined with a shirtless William.

"Now he has!" Jocelyn accused. She pointed a finger at the bedding in disarray.

"I have not!" William said as he got up resolutely, tripping Adhemar as he tried to get up.

Adhemar cursed him as he took a more dignified position on the floor with his back against the bed, relieved that he at least had on a shirt, unlike William.

"It is your own fault, Jocelyn. The boy did what he did to in an attempt to protect your ... Him! My God! That redheaded rodent!" Adhemar's outrage got the better of him and he bellowed.

William covered his ears.

"He has passion!" Jocelyn yelled back.

William sank to the bed. He didn't want to think about Jocelyn and Wat and passion.

"He has lice! And vermin in his... my God. I will never touch you again!" Adhemar retorted, horrified.

"Now that you have William!" Jocelyn accused.

"Now that you have every pestilence that filthy donkey has shared with you!"

"That will suit me fine!" she said to Adhemar. Then turning to William she became grave. "I am so disappointed in you, William."

"I haven't done anything," William protested, standing up again, clearly perturbed at the idea. He looked to Adhemar for confirmation, but Adhemar only looked back at him without a word.

Jocelyn left the tent in a swirl of outraged fabric.

"And no redheaded children will have an inheritance from me!" Adhemar yelled after her.

William glared at Adhemar, but it took Adhemar a few moments to notice as he was searching for the items that he discarded all over the tent in his drunkenness.

"And what is your complaint?" he asked William haughtily. "After all it was you who got me drunk."

"You didn't deny her accusation."

"I did not care to," Adhemar said with all the dignity of a man searching for his pants.

"Now she'll think... and..." William stammered. He pointed to the bed and then to Adheamr who was bending over to pick up his pants.

"Oh for God's sake you sound like him."

"Who?"

"The redheaded varlet!"

"Wat's alright," William said mildly.

Adhamar gave William a look that he hoped would tell him what he thought of his squire. William sighed.

"You aren't going to do anything permanent to Wat, are you?"

Adhemar only looked at William since in truth he hadn't decided what he would do seeing that such an eventuality had never occurred to him.

"She seemed quite bothered." Adhemar said, thinking.

"She has strange ideas in her head. Like you."

William was sitting on his bed holding his head in his hands so that his face was out of sight, and his hair passed between his fingers.

"I haven't gotten this drunk, since..." the boy left off clearly not wanting to finish.

He raised his head and flicked a glance at Adhemar as if to see if he knew what he was going to say. Adhemar gave him a piercing look. Perhaps seeing the look as a challenge, William looked right back at him.

"Since your wedding to the woman I loved," William stated bluntly.

"You should thank me. You would have been no match for her. As it is, I can barely handle her."

"Handle her? When?"

"Don't let these little rebellions fool you."

"Not me," William said mock seriously.

Clearly, he did not think much of Adhemar's control over his wife. Jocelyn never ceased to embarrass him. Now this latest disgrace. In the face of it, Adhemar wondered why he could not hold onto his anger from last night. It came to him faintly like sounds from a distant battle, occasionally reaching a pitch before dying down again. He should have been in the thick of it. It should have had his blood surging. The night of drinking had blurred it, just as Thatcher intended.

Looking at William as he got dressed, Adhemar considered the pleasures of manifold revenge. Old grudges and new could be redressed. Even revenge without violence might give him satisfaction if in one stroke it hurt so many. In the midst of his groaning, William caught Adhemar's look. Adhemar affected an innocent face immediately. It must have been less than convincing.

"Look here..." William started to say.

Adhemar smiled. This also failed to put William at ease.

"We should do this again," Adhemar proposed before he left.

  


To be continued


	3. Chapter 3

Sweet Revenge Part 3

  
  


Adhemar was gone. William tried to think. It wasn't easy with his head still cloudy and painful. He had gotten Adhemar drunk in a good cause. He had also gotten himself drunk since it wouldn't do to let a man drink alone. Then... Nothing of consequence happened at all. They talked. They compared scars.

"Did I give you this one?" Adhemar asked. His voice was thick, his tongue slow.

William shook his head. The motion made his whole body spin though he was lying very still across the bed. Adhemar touched another scar.

"This one?"

William shook his head again. His scars felt like they burned – the ones Adhemar had touched.

"This one looks like a kiss," Adhemar said of a scar on his shoulder.

"French fellow hacked a piece off there," William slurred. It was a sword fight, before he disdained them. "I won," he boasted and looked over at Adhemar. Adhemar was still admiring the scar – with his fingertips. It was making the burning worse. Adhemar lifted his eyes from the scar to William's face. His eyes were like no other man's, like claws reaching out to rip at you. William couldn't look away. He wished Adhemar would close them, do something for God'a sake. He didn't care what. He couldn't bare that gaze. Adhemar's hands were slowly looking for his scars, burning through his flesh.

That's enough of that. William stood up making the empty tent swim around him. They got drunk then they passed out. That's all. There was the usual drunken foolishness. Words and thoughts that meant nothing. William tried to push the whole night out of his memory.

The air was thick and stuffy. William didn't feel like he was alone there. His skin still crawled with Adhemar's hands. William got dressed and got out of his tent only to run into a patch of sunlight that entered his head like a sword through the eyes.

Wat appeared out of that sunbeam, his red hair like a fire. William hoped that his grimace held an appropriate level of condemnation and nothing more.

"Thank God you're alright. Jocelyn didn't say. She just stormed off," Wat said to him.

"You want to tell me what in hell you were thinking!" William asked the words sounding like a scream in his head.

"Thinking?" Wat grappled for a while with the unfamiliar idea.

"Do you know what I've had to do to keep you in one piece?" Willaim asked.

"What? What? What did you..." Wat looking worried as Willaim interrupted him.

"Nothing." William gripped his temples. The sunlight was screwing its way into his skull.

"Was Adhemar rough with you?" Wat asked. He turned his head to the side with concern and looked guilt ridden.

"Did I not say we shouldn't mention it?" William said to Wat's searching look.

"No," Wat said, more confused than ever.

William waved him off and continued on his way. William was lucky it was Wat with his limited view of things he ran into and not someone able to read him better. For once, he was glad that Geoff was no longer with them. He had to put his head aright before he saw anyone with more imagination than Wat. Will wandered aimlessly in hopes of dispelling what ailed him. What ailed him was ale and Adhemar. He swore to himself not to indulge in that combination again. Too heady and rich. Two strong drinks not to be drunk together.

  


Adhemar wanted nothing more than to lie down. The ride back had been torture. The movements of his horse were like being tossed on the roughest seas. When he dismounted, the earth under his feet buckled. Once the ground was solid again, he shoved away the servants. He walked inside with heavy steps. He heard voices in the hall. His inferiors, but useful men, come to meet with him about matters than normally would seem important - money, property, how to protect them, and acquire more of them. Now they only seemed like obstacles between him and his bed.

The thought of his bed brought to him the thought of the bed he had left. Adhemar smiled despite all that vexed him. He remembered seeing William passed out or - if one were to be generous - asleep. The utter relaxation, the open, unguarded abandon to unconsciousness, the temptation. William was lying shirtless. He had taken it off to show him his scars. Adhemar could still feel them rough against his fingers. To have been allowed such tender contact would have seemed unthinkable. Nothing was unthinkable under the right circumstances. Adhemar planned to take full advantage. That Jocelyn's unpleasant doings should bring him such an opportunity - revenge was almost becoming a secondary consideration. The voices from the hall carried to him again, and he remembered the men that waited. He went over tiredly.

When he saw them waiting, Adhemar realized just how much he did not feel like discussing strategy or finances or ... Then he overheard them. "...with a servant. And he carries on like he does." There was a chuckle.

"It's all I can do not to laugh in his face. As arrogant as ever."

Adhemar strode in as arrogant as ever. He smiled in their faces, daring them, but the men were as diffident as always, no trace of what they knew. That was something at least. It hadn't come to that yet. These lesser beings still cowered in his presence, as they should. Adhemar finished with them quickly. A terrible headache gripped his skull as if everything he had drunk took revenge on him all at once. But the pain was nothing to him. Something else gripped him far more tightly. Ah, there it was - his anger a handmaid to humiliation, how had he thought it was gone. He seethed. He planned violent reprisals without end. It was like swimming in blood. All he saw was red. All he smelled was death. To hell with taking his revenge in pleasure. This was who he was. Jocelyn and her putrid lover and Thatcher would all pay for it.

  
  
To be continued 


	4. Chapter 4

Sweet Revenge Part 4

  
  


Adhemar found himself once again in front of Thatcher's tent. He could glimpse the inside, slightly gloomy compared to the bright sunshine of the afternoon. It looked cool. It almost invited him, but he didn't go in.

Thatcher appeared not long after. A green apple in his hand half chewed through. He stopped in mid bite. The sunlight suited him. He halted a few feet away and stared at Adhemar. As he took a few cautious steps closer, Thatcher looked about him. He had the eyes of a startled animal before he recovered himself and took a defiant stance. He cleared his throat before he spoke.

"Adhemar," was all he said after all that. He seemed to be waiting for something. Whatever it was, it didn't happen.

"What brings you back? You drank all my ale."

Thatcher got no answer. It unnerved him though he tried to act unconcerned. He tossed the half-eaten apple to the ground, then kicked it into a tuft of grass that had survived the trampling. Under Adhemar's gaze, Thatcher couldn't stay still. He stomped at the dirt under his feet like a restless horse. Adhemar watched it like a seductive dance of some peasant imbecile. He followed every movement. He lifted his eyes to Thatcher's bold face, lowered them down his body to his feet and back up like he was bewitched. Adhemar saw flashes of last night's naked skin through today's clothes. Strangled for several moments, he was dismayed at the way his insides shifted so treacherously. His rightful fury at those who dared to insult him had evaporated. It was ice turned to snowmelt at the slightest touch of heat. The anger he felt now was at his own soft, weak constitution. A point of his own sword turned on his own flesh, this self-hatred could not be tolerated. It had to be turned outward. Adhemar glared at Thatcher silently. He was the cause of all of it. He would pay.

  


William didn't think it would be so soon that he would have to deal with the man. He expected months might pass, weeks at least, plenty of time to get his head together. William would have felt stupid for just staring at Adhemar like some dumb animal if Adhemar hadn't been doing the same. Adhemar stared at him with a knowing, piercing look. A look hard enough to knock a man down. William twitched like he didn't know which way to go. The look made William want to both retreat and go forward. Both were out of the question, of course. He just had to stand his ground and not make a fool of himself excessively. William thought he heard a noise behind his tent and turned. Adhemar approached and William stared back at him once again. He kept his eyes up, not wanting to be a coward over a sharp look.

"Your maneuvering last night has only effected a delay. Nothing is settled between us," Adhemar's voice was rough and low, reaching William only and no one else.

It took William a moment to recollect what Adhemar was on about. He remembered Wat's unlikely dalliance and mortal peril soon enough.

"Look now, Wat didn't..."

"He is nothing," Adhemar said in a tone that allowed for no arguments.

William was going to argue anyway though. Just then Adhemar leaned forward to place his mouth close to William's ear. William raised his hand to hold him off. His hand fell on Adhemar's chest. The black clothes were almost hot to the touch. William couldn't move. His hand stayed there like raw meat stuck to a hot skewer.

"You and I will have to settle this. When you find yourself wanting something, you know where to find me," Adhemar said, his hot breath licking at William's ear.

William found that he had to force himself to breathe, force himself not to turn to look at Adhemar with his face so close. Through the sound of his own unnatural breathing, William heard Kate yell. He turned and ran around to the back of the tent. Kate was kneeling next to Roland who was spitting out a wadded piece of cloth from his mouth. She looked up at William only briefly as she removed the ropes from around Roland's wrists and ankles.

"They've taken Wat," Roland said now that he was no longer gagged.

"Who?" William asked stupidly.

"Who do you think? Adhemar's men!" Kate answered him.

"Bastard," William spat out as he ran back to where he had left Adhemar. He was only in time to watch the man ride away. Not too far to hear William's cursing, Adhemar turned. His horse protested the sudden change of direction. Adhemar gave Will a pointed look, and he was off. Will found that his horse had been driven off. By the time he found another and mounted, Wat and Adhemar were long gone.

  
  


To be continued


	5. Chapter 5

Sweet Revenge

Part 5

* * *

To anyone's eye, Adhemar was occupied with matters befitting a man of his station. A map was unrolled before him. His fingers traced its lines, pictured what they represented - things that could be conquered, owned, marked as his, used - things of importance. The map might have been drawn on Thatcher's living skin, tanned where the skin took the sun, pale where it lay hidden. No issue was so important that remembering that commoner's touch couldn't distract Adhemar. As if Thatcher were his all important concern and everything else a trifle.

Adhemar's hands clenched. He wanted to rip the map to pieces, but it would not rid him of the intruding thoughts. He knew that. How often had he indulged in bursts of violence to set his mind aright? Strike out, even kill, and be calmed for mere moments. Experience had taught him it was useless. His hands twisted, empty. Forced patience would serve him until Thatcher was in his hands. His hands spread over the map. Thatcher in his hands…

So far, Thatcher had not appeared in the flesh. It was too soon for that. And Adhemar could not rest until he was dealt with.

The heavy door slammed open as Jocelyn entered. Adhemar refused to look up from the map he was no longer examining.

"Where is he?" she demanded.

"What have you misplaced now, my lady? Your virtue? No, that's long gone," Adhemar told her, cold as a stone. Her fury worked to calm his own.

"There will be no end to your misery if..." Jocelyn began to threaten.

Adhemar looked thoughtful before he interrupted her.

"It should more rightly be your William. After all, he opened the door to this sliding down into muck. What's next? Lying down with beasts?" he asked her finally looking at her fully. His voice had not betrayed his anger, but his eyes did. Joselyn didn't back down from his stare.

"I reached my lowest when I lay down with you. You are a monster."

"Then I should act like one," he told her, still speaking coldly but looking as if he were a furnace, black and burning with a strictly contained fire. He stood up and walked past her, out the door.

* * *

"If you find yourself wanting something..."

Adhemar's last words were a constant noise in his ears. William rode fast, but the hooves against the ground and the wind whipping past his ears wouldn't shut them up. Once in town, his progress was slowed. Narrow streets and people milling about spent his patience. By the time he reached the church, his patience was gone. William stomped toward Joselyn. She had come to meet him. Now she looked startled, like he surprised her with his approach.

"Where has he taken him?" William asked her, not hiding his anger.

"I don't know." She in turn did not hide her worry.

"I can't go riding the countryside, storming every castle and tower Adhemar has got a claim to. What the hell good is it being married to the man if you can't find out where in Hell he's taken your lover?!" William yelled.

"Your tone, William," she said in a low, controlled voice of an offended lady, then she cried out, "I can't find out, William, because he doesn't want me to know! He wants to torment me."

She looked around herself, but she didn't see the few people who stared at her. It was a blind look searching for a something that wasn't there.

"What have I done?" she asked herself.

"You've... All right. We'll find him. We'll find him," William said. He reached out his hand but didn't touch her.

It wasn't just her, though, was it. Adhemar had given him a message in person, spilled it right in his ear. William was the animal Adhemar was trying to snare.

"Where is Adhemar now?" William asked.

Jocelyn couldn't tell him. William guessed that Adhemar was now with Wat. That meant that he had no time. William thought back to his days of imprisonment. He closed his eyes and saw Wat helpless, foolish and helpless.

Adhemar's touch had been cruel then, how much more dangerous it was now.

"I've done something," Jocelyn said in the tone of a confession.

"I'd say."

"To get Wat back. I've sent for Chaucer."

"What's he gonna do about it?"

She didn't tell him. William didn't wait around to find out how a poet was going to wrest a varlet from a madman.

* * *

to be continued


	6. Chapter 6

Sweet Revenge

Part 6

* * *

There were things for writing scattered about. Quills were left neglected and parchments curling on the table and on the floor. Spots of spilt ink marred wood and cloth alike. Objects and their owner were in a similar state. At his lodgings, fast asleep at midday, Geoff looked like he always did after a night of debauchery - free of clothes and money, bedraggled and spent. Having taken in the whole disgraceful sight, Roland grabbed hold of Geoff's leg and shook him awake. Geoff shielded his face as if expecting blows. He blinked a few times until he recognized Roland.

"Get up. We need your help," Roland told him gruffly. "Wat's done something stupid."

"You came all the way here to tell me that?" Geoff protested in a sleepy voice.

Roland paid no attention to this. "Come on. Jocelyn has a task for you."

Geoff raised himself on his elbows and watched Roland searching through his things.

"Jocelyn? Roland, you have me confused with her maid."

"Not bloody likely. Get yourself up and get dressed. She said to wear something impressive."

"With Jocelyn's idea of impressive, I'll be wearing a bejeweled tent and a five tiered crown."

"Sounds good," Roland said in his no nonsense way. "Get yourself moving, man. Wat's in trouble."

He sorted through Chaucer's few clothes that lay discarded about the place. Finding some decent things, he threw them at Geoffrey.

"Did he finally fong someone? Have we finally discovered what that means?" He was putting clothes on while still in bed.

"God, I forgot how much you talk."

"How could you forget such a thing, Roland?" Geoff was deeply offended and sitting up now.

"My humble apologies," Roland said as he manhandled him half dressed, out the door.

* * *

_A fine occasion it was - that wedding. Grand but not joyous. Splendid but with no true pleasure to be found. And for once Chaucer had no flowery speeches, not for them. There was one half written somewhere in the back of Chaucer's mind for her and William. That was useless now. If it had been put on parchment, he would have scraped off the ink. Instead its fragments echoed like a cruel laugh. He had different words for her now. _

_"This would be a tragedy, my lady, if you were even half good enough for him," Chaucer said these words as a wedding present to Jocelyn. Something he had wanted to say before. He said it now to a lady in her best finery, feeling justified and very drunk_.

Jocelyn remembered it well as she waited for Roland to bring Chaucer to her. It almost made her cry though Chaucer was nothing to her. He was speaking for another. William had his say already. She was not swayed. Her William whom she discarded for a black suit of armor filled with shit. If she only hadn't seen...

"_Have you consoled him yet?" Jocelyn had asked this drunkard who dared to speak to her so on her wedding day. _

_But she had seen and she could see it still. She could see William holding the reigns of his horse, patting his neck gently. She could see Chaucer's long fingers in William's tangled, blond hair, Chaucer's mouth close to his ear. William standing still not noticing or not minding. Chaucer acted the innocent. There was accusation in his eyes as he looked down at her wedding dress. And she said nothing more. She didn't scream 'I know! I know what you are and I'll tell William and he'll hate you!' Because she didn't know. She didn't know what William knew and she didn't know that he would hate it_.

* * *

It all had to be set aside, Chaucer, William, her pride, so that Wat might be saved. So she could hold on to something. So Adhemar wouldn't win. She did not pretend to be receiving an old friend when she met Chaucer. She did not ask after his health.

"William has gone off searching on his own," Jocelyn informed him.

"Oh, William. He never changes," he looked at her pointedly while extolling William's constancy. "Always the undeserved loyalty, the foolish bravery, the misplaced feeling..."

"Enough," Jocelyn stopped him. Oh how he could go on and on. "Adhemar has gone somewhere, as I can't discover where, he must have gone to where he's keeping Wat. I've called on you, not because I want to listen to you prate, but because you can get the location from Adhemar's squire. You remember the fellow. He has ... a very high opinion of you. Almost as high as you have of yourself."

"That high?"

"And as I know you are not averse to perversion in the service of necessity..."

"Do you deign attack my honor," he asked her, all offended innocence.

She rolled her eyes.

"Think of what my husband is doing to Wat as you dawdle."

Chaucer closed his eyes, not to picture what was being done to Wat but to ward it off. Wat certainly deserved a light to moderate pummeling, a slight cudgeling, some judicious kicking, but he knew Adhemar had nothing so gentle in mind. And there was William to consider. William could under no circumstances be allowed to be in Adhemar's possession. He was about to go, but one thing wouldn't let him depart without comment.

"Wat, my lady? Wat?"

"He has qualities," she said through clenched teeth.

"Yes, he is the only one who knows what in heaven fong means. If even he knows." Chaucer said mostly because he loved to hear himself speak.

* * *

Turning a corner, Adhemar's squire, found himself with an arm around his neck. As Germain said his prayers, he noticed that no blade appeared as he expected. He also noticed that the arm encircling him was doing so rather comfortably. He tested the limits of his confinement and turned to find himself gaping at Goeffrey Chaucer's beauteous face. He was breathless for a few moments. His eyes feasted on the lovely visage. Then he found the wherewithal to speak.

"I know what you want," he claimed in a shaky voice.

"Our souls always had a connection between them," Geoff said as he lightly brushed his hand over the other man's sallow cheek.

"No. Yes. I know what you are doing. Stay back!" Germain warned him raising his arm in half-hearted defense.

"But why?" Chaucer asked, a picture of angelic dismay. His head tilted, his eyes pleaded.

"Because... Because if you don't, the knowledge you seek will flow from me like a river," Germain gasped out then paused with his eyes upraised hopefully. "Was that well put?" he asked Chaucer.

"It ... is most excellent," Chaucer stammered.

"You've been my inspiration."

"What have I inspired in you, aside from this rising excellence?" Chaucer smiled and Germain blushed.

"Rising?" Germain squeaked.

Chaucer leaned in, put his face close to the other man's. Germain went cross eyed as Chaucer spoke.

"Tell me all. Give me what you are striving so valiantly to hold back from me."

"You mustn't ask that of me. I can't hold back." Germain's eyes closed, his lips parted hopefully.

"Don't hold back." Chaucer brushed his lips against the cheekbone, slid to the earlobe, used his tongue.

"My veracity will mean my death." Germain's voice was only a whisper now.

"And my voracity cannot let this moment pass. What is death to us? You will make a beautiful corpse," Chaucer spoke into his ear, letting him feel his breath.

"Will I? I can't tell you, I can't tell you," he protested without heat as Chaucer licked his earlobe.

"I haven't asked for anything but a moment of time to spend in contemplation, to converse, to share that which is deep within us."

"Oh no. Not deep. Don't ask me anything ... your words."

"I haven't done a thing yet."

"But you will and I'll tell you. I'll tell you anything! Just don't stop."

"Why would I stop? Don't worry, we'll be taking this to the very end." And Chaucer pulled him to the end of the alley as if to illustrate.

* * *

His mind contained instructions for innumerable torments he had done, seen and heard of. He invented and dreamed of new ones for this occasion. Those thoughts were overlaid with Thatcher. The way Thatcher looked at him, how he sucked in his breath when he got close, how his eyes flickered then stayed on his and how the moment was lost as when a bird flies off before an arrow strikes it.

He looked at the squire through the bars. His form, the miserable face did not inflame him. If anything it dampened his desire for prolonged violence. He walked away from the door in disgust. One may as well waste time to impale a drowning rat.

As he walked up from the dungeons, light bathed the walls. The air freshened. Patience. The squire was nothing. A lure.

Thatcher had done nothing, said nothing. But there was possibility in it, promise. And if he struck at this rat, this mere servant, the possibility would be lost. He chose to tread carefully. William was his prize and his means of revenge. His original scheme came back to him anew, looking more perfect than ever. Oh how he loved a good battle plan.

* * *

To be continued


End file.
